A Year and A Day

"You were thrashing about, Guy," Clare said, almost accusingly. "It wasn't like your normal spasms."

"No," I replied. "I was having a nightmare. It has gone now."

"A nightmare? What about?"

"Being smothered by Nurse Jones."

Clare looked down at my face, held against her breasts.

"I'm not smothering you, am I?"

I snuggled closer to her.

"No, Clare, you are just loving me. I appreciate these."

I kissed each breast carefully through the thin silk of her nightdress.

"Are you OK if I go back to bed?"

"Yes, thank you Clare. Even if I have a spasm I think your precautions should protect me."

Clare hugged me as tightly as my body would take before kissing me. She left. As her scent faded, the impression of that different perfume still seemed to be at the edge of my consciousness. I went back to sleep. The nightmare didn't return except as a vague unease. I didn't even have a spasm.

In the morning I was frustrated by my bondage until Clare brought my breakfast. Her nail scissors easily removed the staples. I sat in the wheelchair at my desk to eat my breakfast. I felt better than I had done for weeks. Had the spasms been taking more from me than I had been aware? Perhaps after a few weeks of spasm-free nights I could try standing and walking from my room unaided.

Later that morning I did stand when Clare was not around. I managed five steps from my wheelchair and five steps back. It had been a dangerous risk. If I had fallen? But I hadn't.

I was still very conscious that the anniversary of the accident was approaching. Halloween was only a couple of weeks away. I had wanted to reach my target of independence by then. I wouldn't. Any progress would be great if I could maintain it without injury.

When Clare returned with my mid-morning cup of coffee Helen was with her. I raised an eyebrow.

"Helen stayed the night," Clare said. "We sat up late chatting so I invited her to stay. She still has a spare toothbrush and night clothes here from the time when she covered for me at night so there was no problem."

I accepted that. Clare and Helen sat down on the chairs near my desk. Clare picked the picture of Nurse Jones from the printer's out tray.

"Who's this, Guy?" she asked.

"That's Nurse Jones." Helen answered. "I'd recognise that headdress anywhere. She was odd about it. She wanted all the staff to wear one. They told her where to go. I'm not surprised. It's so sexless, almost nun-like."

"Did you know Nurse Jones?" I asked.

"Yes. I audited her accounts a few times."

Helen is a qualified auditor. She audits my accounts as well, not that there are many transactions to deal with for this year.

"I think something like that headdress is in the barn with the nurse's uniforms." Clare said. "I wonder how it is put on? It looks complicated."

"I don't think it can be," Helen replied. "Once I saw Nurse Jones without it. She seemed embarrassed. I looked down at my accounts for a few seconds and she had put it on."

"I'll see if I can find it," Clare said. She put her coffee down and was gone.

"How do you feel today, Guy?" Helen asked.

"I think I'm making progress, slow and steady," I replied. "I had hoped to be fully recovered by the anniversary of the accident. I won't be but I'm getting there."

"That's good. You were a real mess. Improving gradually is probably the best way."

"I still feel so helpless and so dependent on Clare – and you, Helen. You have done so much for me."

"Not that much in recent months. It doesn't matter. We are friends. You and Clare were there for me when Alan died. Helping you two has helped me deal with the loss. It has taken me out of myself."

"What we you discussing so long last night? Or can't you tell me?"

"Nothing much. I have been out a couple of times through the singles club. Clare and I were discussing the merits or demerits of my escorts. I needed her advice because I feel vulnerable..."

"Vulnerable? You? I would have thought that you were the last person to feel vulnerable. You could throw any man who got too fresh across the room."

Helen laughed.

"Not in that sense. I mean that anyone who shows affection to me could manipulate me. I am not the wealthiest widow around but I do own my house outright and I don't need to work. That makes me vulnerable to persuasive lazy bums who want to live on their wife's earnings."

"Like me?"

Helen stood up, came across to my wheelchair, bent over and kissed me on the forehead. Her hand rested on my head as she spoke.

"No." She said firmly. "Not like you, Guy. You want to work to support yourself and Clare. One day you will. If I met someone like you, who wanted to work but couldn't, I wouldn't mind supporting him until he could work again, if I loved him half as much as Clare loves you."

I looked up at her.

"I love her too." I said softly.

"I know. So does she. I'm jealous of you two. Alan never loved me that much."

"He didn't?" I was surprised.

"No." Helen's voice was definite. "He was playing around with other women. I found out shortly before he died. That's why I couldn't understand why his head was wrapped in my nightdress. We hadn't been close like that for months. If it had been another woman's nightdress? That I would have believed."

"I'm sorry, Helen."

She ruffled me hair almost unconsciously.

"I was thinking about divorcing Alan. I hadn't done anything about it. When he died I felt guilty. Why had he needed to go elsewhere? What was lacking in me? Had he committed suicide? He hadn't. The circumstances made suicide impossible. If he had tried to smother himself with that nightdress he would have needed to tie it around his head with something else and there was nothing else there. For months after his death I was torturing myself about what I could or should have done when I found he was cheating on me. Clare helped me through that. We talked for hours. You helped too, just by being there and accepting that I needed Clare. Do you remember all those cups of tea?"

"Of course." I had kept providing Helen and Clare with tea while they sat on the living room sofa for hours. Each time I came into the house from the barn, I would put the kettle on, make the tea and take it to them before returning to my work with a sturdy mug.

Helen came back into the room with a large carrier bag.

"I found them. I brought a couple in each size. Helen, can you work out how they fit? You saw her. We didn't."

Helen lifted a couple of headdresses from the bag.

"This one looks brand new and about your size, Clare. Sit down and I'll try to fit it."

Clare sat. Helen spread the headdress in her hands and lifted it up and over Clare's head. When Helen moved her hands away Clare's face was framed in white cloth with side curtains hanging each side and a drape down the back of the neck. That headdress seemed to remove Clare's personality. All her hair was covered. Her face was lapped in white cloth and the drapes to the side shadowed it.

"Ugh!" Clare said. "I feel like a horse in blinkers. I can only see straight ahead. What do I look like?"

"There's a mirror over there." I pointed. I used that mirror for shaving myself. Clare looked in it.

"Hmm. If I wanted to dress up as a medieval matron, I suppose it might do. It seems very impractical. Why would Nurse Jones wear this? Had she lost her hair?"

"Her hair was grey, Clare, but she seemed to have enough of it in a closely shaped style." Helen answered.

"It seems to do two contradictory things," I said impulsively. "It removes the personality that your hair gives you and yet emphasises the individuality of your face, your cheekbone structure and overall shape. You know how much difference a changed hairstyle can make. That headdress reduces your head to the basics. I'm not sure whether to approve or not."

"You can see so much?" Clare asked. "I can't, not on me. Perhaps I am used to looking at my bare face and ignoring my hairstyle. Could you try a headdress on, and give me an idea, please Helen?"

"OK. I might find it more difficult to fit one on myself."

"Then try on Guy."

"On me, Clare?"

"Why not, Guy? You can see the difference on me. What would you look like framed in white linen?"

"It's not linen, Clare." Helen retorted. "It's cotton or cotton and polyester maybe but not linen. It's too soft and floppy."

As she spoke Helen was moving towards me with a headdress poised. I wasn't given the opportunity to refuse. Helen flipped the material over my head. The neck closed around mine. There was some elastic in it. The soft clinging surrounded my face and Helen was busy behind my head, tightening something. She flipped the drapes down beside my cheeks. I could see what Helen meant. I felt as if I had a white hood pulled well forward. As I moved my eyes left and right all I could see was the inside of the drapes.

Clare's head appeared in front of me. Her drapes fell forward as she bent down.

"I see what you mean, Guy. Your face doesn't look masculine, nor feminine, but a sort of neuter. If you hadn't shaved so well there would be no doubt that your face was male and that would look weird."

"What are these, Clare?" Helen had been rummaging in the carrier bag. She held up some rectangular pieces of cloth.

"I'm not sure, Helen. There were several in the same place as the headdresses. I thought they might be part of them so I chucked them in."

Helen looked at the pieces.

"They have hooks attached at the edge. They must fit on some eyes. Hold still, Guy."

Helen lifted one of the side drapes and felt around my head.

"There! I've found the eyes. Let's see..."

Helen fingers fumbled behind my ears. She attached one side of a cloth and pulled it across my mouth and nose before reaching under the drape on the other side of my head.

"Hey!" I protested. The thick cloth muffled my objection over my lips. Helen pulled the cloth tighter. A fold entered between my teeth.

"Mmff!" I spluttered.

"I think it is a surgical mask designed to go with the headdress," Helen said ignoring my shaking head, "and this one is too small."

"It's effective though, isn't it?" Clare said as she grinned at me. "It's shut Guy up."

Helen turned on Clare.

"Your turn."

Helen repeated the process on Clare who was wriggling slightly. She wasn't really trying to avoid the mask. She knew she could remove it easily. So could I. All I had to do was raise my hands and unhook it.

Clare walked over to look in the mirror.

"It's a good disguise, isn't it?" Her voice was barely reduced by her mask. "I could be almost anyone dressed like this."

She could. Above her shoulders only her eyes were visible.

"I think yours is the right size. Guy's isn't. I've gagged him."

"Poor Guy." Clare didn't sound sympathetic.

Helen removed my mask, looked in the bag, found another one and compared sizes.

"This should be the right size, Guy."

It was. It rested on my nose and loosely covered my mouth and chin, meeting the neck part of the headdress. I could breathe and speak.

"Thank you, Helen," I said. "That's better."

"That's OK, Guy. I didn't intend to silence you. It just happened."

"What about you, Helen?" Clare asked. "Why don't you..."

"OK. OK."

Helen fitted a headdress over her head and then fiddled to get the mask attached. Clare had to help her with the second set of hooks and eyes.

"I think these have possibilities for Halloween costumes," I said. "If you two wore nurses uniforms with the headddresses and masks and carried fake bottles of blood..."

"Perhaps, Guy. But wouldn't locals associate these with Nurse Jones?" Clare sounded concerned.

"I think they might, Guy. It's not that long since she died and these headdresses are distinctive." Helen sounded regretful.

"I suppose we could change them so they didn't look exactly the same..."

The telephone rang. Clare answered it.

"Who? No. There's no one of that name here. OK."

She put the phone down.

"A man wanted Andrea. Do we know an Andrea?"

I shook my head.

"I did." Helen said. "But it wouldn't be her."

"Who is Andrea?" I asked.

"She was Nurse Jones' daughter. She left this area shortly after the death."

"And she wouldn't have had this telephone number," I said, "So it can't have been for her. It must be a wrong number for some other Andrea."

We left it at that but the mood had passed. We removed the headdresses. Clare folded them away into the bag and left it in a chair. They wheeled me through into the dining room. I sat there chatting to them through the serving hatch as they worked in the kitchen preparing lunch.

After lunch I rolled myself back to the annexe. I opened the security drawer and took out Nurse Jones' diary.

Mr Akers' death had helped the home's finances for a while. The lady who took over his bed was less frail. The pressure on the staff reduced for a couple of months until one of the other lady residents had a stroke. When she returned from a hospital stay the strain on the staff increased again. A week afterwards she died suddenly. Although there were no suspicious circumstances Nurse Jones was reminded of Mr Akers. There were several passages of self-recrimination.

The diary detailed the home's gradual loss of profitability for the next few months. Nurse Jones despair filled the pages. She couldn't see a solution.

About six months before her death several residents died in a week. All of them had been high-dependency. The impact on the home's finances was immediate. The accounts turned from deep red to just in the black. However Nurse Jones was worried. The deaths had been too sudden and too convenient. Had there been some assistance?

When the next elderly lady resident died Nurse Jones checked the staff uniforms waiting to be washed. One showed a glisten of mucus across the skirt over the wearer's buttocks. There was no way that could have happened in normal activities. Had someone sat across the patient's face?

Nurse Jones didn't write down whom she suspected of being the murderess. She did say that it had to be a murderess because all the deaths had happened at nights when only female nurses and nursing aides were on duty. The home's two male nurses only worked the day shifts and were usually dealing with those male patients who were embarrassed by female carers. She didn't say so, but reading between the lines, I felt that she knew whose uniform she had found.

The diary continued until the day before Nurse Jones' death. That morning another resident had been found dead. Nurse Jones was convinced that this death was not natural and she intended to confront the woman she suspected when she was next on duty. The diary ended as Nurse Jones was about to go on duty that night.

The next morning she was found dead on an empty bed in a private room. From what I remembered of the inquest she appeared to have had a severe asthma attack that had precipitated heart failure. Having read the diary I wasn't sure. Had the murderess struck one last time to silence Nurse Jones?

What I couldn't understand is why Nurse Jones hadn't spoken to the police. The diary made it clear that she had justification for her suspicions for months.

I searched the local newspapers back files again. The inquest into Nurse Jones death was given in detail. She had suffered asthma for years and in her case breathing in a human hair could trigger it. Was that why she'd worn such an enveloping headdress? It had covered her hair. The side drapes would protect her from contact with other people's hair. I could understand why she had wanted her staff to cover their hair as well.

There had been some conflict about the time of Nurse Jones' death. The medical opinion said about midnight. Several of the residents said that they had seen her on her rounds until about six in the morning. Their evidence was dismissed. The coroner suggested that they were elderly and might be confused. Some of their relatives protested to the local paper that the particular residents might be elderly and frail but were in complete command of their mental faculties. Since Nurse Jones' death was regarded as natural there were no further enquiries.

I added my thoughts to the Word document and put the diary back in the locked security drawer. I tried to forget Nurse Jones as I checked ebay. Success! I had sold three items for far more than I expected. I went to the rack where I kept the small curios I auctioned on ebay, took down the sold items and packed them. Clare or Helen could take them to the Post Office for me.

That night the nightmare returned. This time I was sure that it was just a nightmare. There was no trace of that perfume. I was on the bed, helplessly bound by Clare, as a breast descended on my face and enveloped my face. The breast spread over me driven by the mass of a heavy body ensuring that I had no means of escape. I was terrified as I felt the life leaving me.

The breast withdrew. A plump backside appeared and settled over my whole head. I could feel the heavy cotton of the uniform skirt's hem across my chest as the buttocks closed over me. Their owner wriggled herself until my breathing was completely cut off. I died again and embarrassed myself by ejaculating as I gave up the unequal struggle against those buttocks. Normally I wouldn't think that being smothered under a woman's skirt was erotic. In the nightmare I did.

It was weird. I died several times that night and each death was incredibly arousing as if that was what I wanted to do, to die under a woman's backside or smothering breast.

I was awake for hours with my brain whirling. Why did I have this nightmare? Was there any reality triggering it? Could Clare or Helen be really trying to kill me? Was it just the effect of reading Nurse Jones' diary and knowing that there was a multiple killer somewhere in our community?

Why would Clare or Helen want to kill me? Was Clare so desperate for money that she intended to ensure that I wouldn't survive a year and a day? Was Helen her accomplice? Could either of them have been the killer at the Nursing Home? I couldn't see how. Neither of them had been nurses or nursing aides. If they had wandered around the corridors of the Nursing Home at night dressed in uniforms someone would have challenged them. There were so few staff that any stranger would be obvious.

Why had Clare given me Nurse Jones' diary? Had she read it? Was it a deliberate attempt to worry me and precipitate a heart attack? What had she said? Neither she nor Helen could read it? Why not? They had both studied shorthand at school. If I could read it, so could they, couldn't they? Had Clare lied to me?

My brain was reeling with suspicions. If the woman I loved wanted to murder me, what could I do? She made me helpless every night. Even if she hadn't I was so weak that she could easily overpower me. If Helen helped her I wouldn't have a chance.

In the morning I was covered in sweat. Clare had to help me to the adapted bath before I felt human again. In the daylight with Clare's arms around me last night's thoughts seemed ridiculous. She loved me. So did Helen. I couldn't see either of them trying to kill me. If they had wanted to they could have done so months ago when I first came home from hospital and was much weaker.

I was still worried. I decided to make a test.

"Clare? Do you remember that joint accident policy?"

"Yes Guy. What about it?"

"Does it provide anything that we could claim?"

"It doesn't matter."

Why didn't it matter? Was Clare hiding something from me?"

"Why doesn't it matter?"

"Have you looked at it recently? Is that why you are asking about it?"

"Yes. I thought there might be some provision..."

"There might have been – if it was still current. We let it lapse three years ago. Didn't you notice that?"